What an AI receptionist costs in the UK
A trades-focused AI receptionist in the UK typically costs £39 to £99 a month, with some tiers reaching £199 and beyond. Human answering services run £45 to £400 a month plus per-call or per-minute charges. Missed-call text-back, sold on its own, goes from almost nothing to £450 a month depending on who’s reselling it. And a striking number of providers, including most of the biggest names, won’t tell you the price at all without a sales call.
Those are the headlines. The real story is in the pricing models, because the headline number and the bill you actually pay part ways quickly in this market. The same question for a specific trade is on the pages for a plumbing virtual receptionist, a remote receptionist for electricians or an AI receptionist for builders. For the choice itself, see AI versus a human answering service, and put your own missed enquiries through the cost per enquiry calculator.
Verified examples, from the vendors' own pages
All checked August 2026, all links go to the source. Among trades-specific AI receptionists: Trade PA starts at £39 a month, Down To Earth AI is £45 a month plus a £299 setup fee and £23 a month per extra channel, Hey Jodie runs £49 to £199 with unlimited minutes, TradeAlly is a flat £59 with 75 calls included, and Ringby starts at £77, fully managed.
On the human side, Face For Business publishes plans from £49 to £115 a month billed by the second, though cover stops at evenings and Sunday afternoon rather than 24/7. Moneypenny, JAM and AllDayPA publish no rate card. And if you’re tempted to assemble it yourself from a phone system, Ringover will sell you seats from £15 a month on a twelve-month commitment, then charge from 19p a minute for the AI voice agent and £25 a month per licence for WhatsApp and the other channels, which adds up to more than the dedicated trades products for a system you configure yourself.
What actually drives the price
- Channels. Nearly every AI receptionist on the market answers the phone and nothing else. The moment you want missed-call texts, WhatsApp or email handled too, you’re either paying per channel or discovering it’s not offered at all.
- Minutes and calls. Some plans cap included talk time (100 minutes, 75 calls) with overage rates behind them; some are genuinely unlimited. A busy month on a metered plan is where budgets go to die.
- Setup fees. £0 to £299 among the verified examples, and “build fee plus you pay the platforms directly” models exist too, where the monthly cost is honest but unbounded.
- Per-user pricing. Job-management tools like Tradify look cheap at £37 a month until you multiply by five users and get £185. Per-job and flat-rate models don’t compound like that.
- Contracts. Month-to-month is common among the newer AI products and rare among the incumbents. Twelve-month commitments hide in the headline prices of phone systems and directories alike.
The numbers this market makes up
While researching this page we found the same suspicious statistics everywhere: “62% of calls to tradespeople go unanswered”, “78% of customers buy from whoever replies first”, “plumbers lose £125,000 a year to missed calls”. None of them trace back to a real study. They are vendor arithmetic, recycled between marketing blogs until they sound like facts. We’d rather tell you that than quote them.
Here’s what actually checks out. A Fix Radio survey of over 220 UK tradespeople found 34% have lost work because they couldn’t answer the phone, and 60% struggle to answer while working. And the lead-response research published in Harvard Business Review found that responding to an enquiry within five minutes rather than thirty makes you roughly 21 times more likely to qualify the lead. Two sourced facts beat ten invented ones, and they carry the same message: speed pays. Our calculator will run the maths on your own numbers rather than someone’s made-up ones.
And what does Shoogly cost?
We don’t publish our pricing, which, as you’ll have gathered from this page, is the norm in this market rather than the exception; ours is a flat monthly figure agreed on a call, with a one-off build, no long contract, and a 60-day money-back guarantee on the build. What we’ll happily say in public is what you get for it: we’re built for the gap everyone else on this page leaves open. Almost every product above answers the phone only. Ours answers every door, written and spoken: the website form, texts, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, web chat and the calls you can’t take, in your own voice, with every enquiry qualified and on one job board, and one system rather than a stack of add-ons. The fastest way to a number is a 15-minute call, and if the maths doesn’t work for your volume of enquiries, we’ll say so.
| Category | Typical UK price | Model | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI receptionist (trades-specific) | £39–£99/mo, some tiers £199+ | Flat monthly, sometimes + setup or per-channel fees | Almost all voice-only; channels and minutes stack the bill |
| Human answering service | £45–£400/mo + per-call or per-minute | Monthly plus overage | Takes a message, not the job; 24/7 costs extra; big names hide pricing |
| Missed-call text-back (standalone) | £95–£150/mo solo, £280–£450 agency-managed | Flat monthly + SMS usage | A holding text, not an answer; the automation costs pennies to run |
| Lead-gen directories | £80–£120/mo typical, or £5–£40 per lead | Subscription (often 12-month) or pay-per-lead | You buy the lead, then race 3–5 other firms to answer it first |
| Job management software | £25–£269/mo per-job, or £28–£44 per user | Per job or per user | Organises work you've won; doesn't answer enquiries; per-user compounds |